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After watching the entirety of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, and rewatching some episodes, I wanted to write about how it impacted me and what it accomplished.

I was hooked from the first episode. Having such a well-produced and overarching presentation of scientific discovery, scientists, and the scientific method on prime-time television was thrilling in and of itself. For the most part, every subsequent episode only reinforced this feeling.

What you can only see when considering the series as a whole is its main narrative arc, one I hoped would be highlighted, and arguably the most important topic for this show: climate change. Particularly from the second episode on, with the unnamed chamber in the "Halls of Extinction" left for the current massextinction perpetuated by human activity, through to the final episode where Tyson's appeal for changing course is explicit, urgent, and heartfelt, global warming was addressed from all angles. Cosmos was broadcast on Fox on Sunday evenings and again on National Geographic on Mondays. It was a major cultural force with millions of viewers nationally and millions more worldwide. The explanation of climate change, our evidence for its human origin, and the steps that need to be taken to remediate its effects is a moral imperative that Cosmos addressed head on. Yet in taking climate change seriously, Tyson still managed a carefully-chosen hopeful tone for this and other issues.

That's the second theme that shines through each episode: hope and optimism for improvement. Really the entire series focuses on humanity's potential for advancement, both in our knowledge about the universe and our application of that knowledge for benevolent purposes. And remarkably, Cosmos manages this hopeful tone without shying away from our failures and mistakes: the persecution of scientists; corporate greed; personal spats; sexism. It is this presentation of humanity as mistaken but self-correcting--a metaphor perhaps for the scientific method itself--that imbues the show with a spiritual quality that I connected with deeply. This humanistic approach is in a way very scientific. We can only rely on our own ingenuity, our own innovation, our own purposeful application of scientific knowledge to save us, and the rest of the planet, from ourselves.

From a simple and clear explanation of evolution by natural selection to Sagan's Golden Record, Cosmos was a thrilling look at why we do science, how we do science, and what scientific inquiry can offer to humanity in our search for meaning and understanding in this world. I can only hope they consider another season or that future scientific documentaries study the lessons of Cosmos to make a meaningful impact.

Dating — online or off — is frustrating and bewildering, a long and tearful journey to a great partner. While technology has absolutely transformed how we find potential dates, the most significant change is cultural. Instead of settling down with someone “good enough” we ask so much from our partners now that it’s only natural the search for them is arduous.

Our conversations about civic matters—economic policies, schooling systems, religion, science, and social institutions—are severely lacking in nuance and reasoned debate. Instead, what flourishes are simplistic arguments and ad hominem attacks. This trend is strengthened by a media environment where we can easily consume pieces tailored to our point of view, avoiding challenge and change.

On Being is a weekly public radio show hosted by Krista Tippett ostensibly about religion and spirituality, but now the host of a broader series of discussions called the Civil Conversations Project. I used to turn off On Being when it came on my radio Sunday afternoons, put off by the wispy quality, assuming it was a liberal echo chamber of feel-good, empty spirituality.

But as I would listen in snippets, or accidentally turn it on in the car, I found it to be a series of careful, respectful dialogues about difficult subjects, with religion, of course, among the trickiest.

So it did not altogether surprise me to find myself enchanted by arecent episode on gay marriage, which really became a window into how to have civil debates. An interview of David Blankenhorn and Jonathon Rauch—originally on opposite sides of the gay marriage debate, and now friends in agreement on many issues—the discussion covered David’s changed mind on gay marriage, but much more interestingly their process of what they called “achieving disagreement.”

For this post I really want to excerpt some longer segments that, I think, speak for themselves. I encourage listening to the full episode. To have two people agree about how to disagree, that are intellectually honest in their point of view and empathetic enough to consider the other side is tragically rare these days and models a better way to converse. I think we can learn from them how to continue to passionately disagree while remaining not just polite, but truly civil.